CFP: Modernism and Theory (3/1/06; collection)

full name / name of organization:

Stephen Ross

contact email:

saross@uvic.ca

"In Theory Lies Modernism"

This volume asks about -- and offers multipleperspectives on -- the relationship between modernism and theory.As the most recent modernist studies associationconference (November 3-6, 2005) made abundantlyclear, the last decade’s tendency to expand thetemporal, geographical, and material boundariesof modernism continues unabated. Yet, in atwofold irony, this renewed vitality of moderniststudies has come at the expense of a key area ofinquiry that is both intimately linked tomodernism and largely responsible for therejuvenation of modernist studies: critical theory.

On the one hand, critical theory clearly developsalongside of and emerges from modernism, and yetit is all-too-often seen as decisively breakingwith it or (worse) as constituting the phantasmof postmodernism. This initial irony iscompounded by the fact that the massiverejuvenation of modernist studies was enabledprecisely by theory’s confrontation with thepredominant notions of the literary, canonformation, disciplinary formations, high and lowculture, progress, civilisation, and imperialism.By repressing theory’s fundamental continuitieswith modernism along with its power to enable the“new modernisms,” modernist studies have runprecisely the kind of risk its new inclusiveethic strains so hard to avoid: it forecloses acritical perspective on modernist studies – aperspective whose claim to consideration is allthe stronger because it is not simply on modernism but part of it as well.

Breaking with the mechanisms of repression andforeclosure which see theory excluded from the“new modernist studies” in all but the mostinstrumental capacities, "In Theory LiesModernism" will begin from the assertion thatmodernism and theory have deep and enlighteningaffinities. It will continue the “new modernist”project of expanding what qualifies as modernist,and it will restore theory to the realm of modernist studies.

To this end, "In Theory Lies Modernism" will usea dialogical format whose effectiveness hasrecently been demonstrated in Olson and Kerby’s_Voices in Dialogue_ (University of Notre DamePress, 2005). This format places originalcontributions and replies to those contributionsin direct conversation. Several prominentmodernist critics have already indicated aninterest in writing such responses.

With this engaging format "In Theory LiesModernism" will bring to the forefront ofcritical study a set of relations,correspondences, continuities and ruptures whichhave gone seriously understudied thus far, notsimply inaugurating and setting the terms ofdiscussion, but also initiating sustainable linesof inquiry that can generate productive dialogue for years to come.

Interested? Please contact Stephen Ross atsaross_at_uvic.ca for a full description of theproject. 500-word proposals are due by 1 March,2006; full papers will be required as soon as six weeks after that date.